I have posted this on a few other reputable websites for healthy discussion and feedback. I will address any and all comments for this thread by TrafficPlanet members.

The point of this case study is to determine how much $$ can be made on Squidoo; like Mr. Terry Kyle I get my "jollies" by doing random tests online since things can get a bit stale. This is month 1 one the case study tracking ranking, traffic, affiliate sales, and money earned

You can see on many of these I took an ample amount of time doing my due diligence to provide great content on the lenses (I read character biographies for hours plus I'm a fan). Guess what, the earnings are 0 for those lenses, but for other products they are converting. The risk reward ratio isn't there if you focus on a product for days and it doesn't convert. Need to spread the risk.

When you are stating "you can make more" I agree but you would probably have to spend days or weeks fine tuning a lense and hope it converts.

My PS3 vs Xbox 360 vs Wii is proof of that. That literally took days and days of research and creating the lense - 0 earnings.

I understand if you have a hugely successful ranking lense you will make more $$ but for 99% of squidoo users you aren't going to get Lense of the Day, and your lenses will most likely resemble my earnings versus what you have put forth (closer to hundreds or thousands a month?).

It's a bit like the 1% real life rich people telling the 99% to get their act together. Let's face it, if we asked HONESTLY how many people were raking in XXXX per month on Squidoo I bet the real number is scary low.

You are huge man j/k Logan has made a good point here. I appreciate the case study but honestly I think that you put too much work in and sadly the return of it will not be that good. Homever I'll be checking for updates , good luck

just brilliant! I think any person who wanted to try squidoo should read this first. but, i'll still believe matt can pull it off because from my understanding his lenses are just a month old? or i was not following it right? because if it's just a month old, then he has still a lot of work to do to have that on the top page.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought I heard that Squidoo has a profit sharing system for lenses depending on their ranking, which means you can actually earn a lot more that way than just from affiliate commissions.

I'm going to create a WSO of sorts, but just for this forum. I'll make a sales thread and sell it for a very reasonable price. I'm talking less than $20. "The Makings of a $733/mo. Squidoo Lens - A How To Guide". I'm not about to expose some of my higher earning lenses & niches for obvious reasons, but I think this lens in particular will bode well for a case study and learning experience. I'll break everything down:

Generic advice here:

Sound fair?

No, sounds frighteningly cliche, and the reason I decided to be so open with this study. I don't like when marketers make claims, give generic advice and never actually reveal anything (doesn't really benefit people unless you can show an example or two). However, if you do create this WSO and do reveal lenses that make $733 a month I'll be the first to buy it, but talking about products, tags, seo, backlinks, etc is preaching to the choir 99% of the time. The only thing that matters is action, not necessarily advice when it comes to Squidoo.

Great info Logan Sargent, never really dabbled with squidoo lens but ive been considering it over the past few months and to hear about the potential from someone with clearly a lot of experience has been very useful! thanks

I have a report on how to make money with Squidoo called "Squidoo Fast Cash" which is included with my Article Traffic Jackpot WSO product - Step by Step Traffic Plan (link in signature).

It is not hard to make money with Squidoo at all. The key is to pick low competition keywords that can quickly rank in the SERPS. It also makes it fast and easy if you use Squidoo's links instead of your own. Though, I do add mine to some modules.

You can also make money with the Tier Ranking System. Lenses are ranked according to activity etc. This is for Overall ranking which fluctuates daily, so it is averaged.

Tier 1 is lenses ranked from 1 up to 2000
Tier 2 is 2001 and up to and including 10000
Tier 3 is 10001 up to 85000
Tier 4 is 85000

How much money? In April 2012 a Tier 1 lens earned around $35. Tier 2 earned around $6. Tier 3 about .30 cents. Anything over a Tier 4 earns nothing for tier payments.

Tier payments are icing on the cake.

I always suggest people develop an IM business they have as much control over as possible, but for extra cash, links and trying things out Squidoo is great!

considering that seo'd sites are not anymore in (with the recent update), will the current practice on ranking your lenses still work? overall, i think there was a list somewhere in mashable that showed sites that were greatly affected by the update in terms of ranking